Kohshin Finley’s first L.A. show opens at Jeffrey Deitch

To spend 10 years in one place is a relationship as meaningful as any other. Maybe more meaningful. There’s a level of grace and acceptance the space offers to its inhabitant over time, allowing them to shift and mutate without judgment. The space says, “Do you. I’m here. I see you.” Artist Kohshin Finley’s work exists in the context of relationships — with art history, with his friends and family, with past versions of himself — and the studio he’s been doing this work in for nearly a decade feels like a container for them all, a reflection and protection of his different periods as an artist.

The space floats above a sea of tourists in Hollywood buying plastic Oscar statuettes at souvenir shops, but you wouldn’t know it by how quiet it gets up there. Its west-facing windows diffuse the room with a coat of hazy light. It used to be a hotel rumored to have ties to Clark Gable, and all of the 100-year-old architectural details are original. “It’s another thing connecting me to certain histories in L.A.,” Finley says. “I’m connecting to some sphere or energy that is flowing.”

Walking in on a hot Tuesday afternoon, I felt their presence immediately — the pieces taking up the most physical and spiritual real estate in the studio. They were staring back at me. They were at my feet, inscribed with nearly invisible poetry. They were mid-sentence. They were beckoning: Come here, come closer, stay longer, there’s so much to see. Finley was in the process of finishing the work for his first solo show in L.A., called “Still Life,” opening at Jeffrey Deitch on Nov. 8. It’s a combination of the large-scale oil portraiture Finley’s become so known for, depicting a collection of faces close to him and close to L.A., plus his ceramic vessels and poetry. The pieces are framed together in custom wooden wall hangings made in collaboration with woodworker Lucas Raynaud — which range from straightforward to more complex compositions — putting the earthenware and portraits in close conversation with each other.

Near the window was a portrait of Lionel Boyce, one of the actors in “The Bear.” There was one of designer Chris Gibbs deep in conversation. Artist Diana Yesenia Alvarado was squatting in the studio with a layer of sunlight blanketing her hair. Artists Mario Ayala and Mia Carucci were captured together, hanging across the wall from singer Kelsey Lu, barefoot with black toenail polish on. The portrait of Finley’s wife, Cameron Washington, was perched in the southwest corner, looking down on the space like a kind of patron saint of all the portraits, over a dozen total.

Kohshin wears a Comme Des Garçons Homme Plus blazer and pants, a Hollywood Ranch Market scarf and his own jewelry.

All of the subjects are Finley’s friends or collaborators and many of them — if you are making art in L.A. or paying attention to who is making art in L.A. — are faces you’ll recognize. In Finley’s portraits, subjects are depicted with an openness that comes from knowing and loving the person staring back at them. The armor comes down. The body language relaxes.

Looking at some of the pieces in the walnut frames, the word “altar” easily comes to mind. When seen all together, the works feel like they’re honoring someone or something. Both the paintings and the earthenware are scribbled with an illegible stream of consciousness poetry that Finley is channeling while making the work — often only visible in texture when the light hits right. “I’m thinking about these words and what that feeling translates to more than what it reads like,” he says of this part of his process. “Writing is a way of marking existence. For me to have that as a thumbprint foundation to pretty much everything that I do is like: Before anything else, someone was here.”

They are altars, yes. But they’re also something closer and more tangible. “I want to humanize the people on the paintings because you could see them around the corner. Some of these people, you know exactly who they are. It’s not using them as a placeholder for anybody. No. It’s like, I’m specifically painting Dee Alvarado.”

“In Her Light,” a piece showing in Kohshin Finley’s solo show, “Still Life,” at Jeffrey Deitch.

(Copyright: Kohshin Finley; photo: Never Nothing Studio; courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch)

Finley compares these pieces to a windowsill — a look into what these subjects are like when the defenses dissolve, into their relationship with Finley, into whatever conversation led them to this point. Initially, he was thinking of this body of work in terms of domesticity. The paintings would capture people in their homes and the ceramic vessels, as a metaphor for himself as an artist in service of his subject, would be serving ware — plates, cups, bowls, bottles. He wanted it to feel like everyday moments with the people he knows and loves. “They’re a way to frame, to honor, to see,” Finley says of the work. “That’s where the name of the show, ‘Still Life,’ comes from: ‘Let me hold you for a second, let me bring you down so you can take some time.’”

Finley has a sage-like quality. You can tell he’s thought about this work for a long time, takes his responsibility as what he calls “a vessel for the art” seriously, understands how to articulate it for us regular people. He finds God in the details too — in his work, in the beauty he reaches for every day. Today, for instance, he’s wearing an oxford shirt embroidered with his initials in Olde English, a vintage silk tie tucked back into the shirt midway — a styling point seen in Saint Laurent’s spring/summer 2026 men’s show. He has two fashion designer parents who named him after Kohshin Satoh, the cult Japanese designer known for dressing artists, and who once held a fashion show at iconic New York nightclub the Tunnel, where Miles Davis and Andy Warhol modeled.

You get the sense when talking to Finley that he has something to teach. If he looks and sounds like an art professor it’s because he is, having recently started working at his alma mater, Otis College of Art and Design — usually in Comme des Garçons, no less.

“As The River Flows,” a piece showing in Kohshin Finley’s solo show, “Still Life,” at Jeffrey Deitch.

(Copyright: Kohshin Finley; photo: Never Nothing Studio; courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch)

“Onto You,” from Kohshin Finley’s solo show, “Still Life,” at Jeffrey Deitch.

(Copyright: Kohshin Finley; photo: Never Nothing Studio; courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch)

“Reunion,” from Kohshin Finley’s solo show, “Still Life,” at Jeffrey Deitch.

(Copyright: Kohshin Finley; photo: Never Nothing Studio; courtesy of the artist and Jeffrey Deitch)

Kohshin wears a vintage tie, a Comme des Garçons Homme Plus blazer, Frame pants, Alexander McQueen shoes and his own jewelry.

To learn that this is Finley’s first L.A. show, a city he’s from, and where he and his family have such deep artistic roots and an imprint, feels like some cosmic oversight. His work is part of the permanent collections at the Hammer Museum and LACMA, and he’s had solo exhibitions at Barbati Gallery in Venice, Italy, and at Various Small Fires in Dallas. He’s been in countless group shows, including with Jeffrey Deitch, such as “Shattered Glass,” curated by AJ Girard and Melahn Frierson. But showing solo in his hometown is a different thing. It was his first goal when he decided he wanted to become a fine artist, one he pursued intensely for a while. “I fought really hard for a long time to get one,” he acknowledges. “My fighting for it also drove me away from it.” Finley got some offers over the years, but the timing or place didn’t feel right. And it was in the time that followed when he feels that he opened himself up to his practice.

Finley’s wife gifted him ceramics lessons during the pandemic, an offering that would change the course of his work. Through ceramics, Finley felt grounded into another artistic lineage, to himself and his ancestors. It now makes up an integral part of the show. He fired the pieces with Altadena ceramist Jotham Hung, fully immersing himself in the medium over the last few years.

“I feel the most clear about myself and my purpose as an artist than I’ve ever felt,” Finley says. “If I had had it earlier in my career, it would have been great, but it would be exponentially different than what it is going to be now.”

What you can see at the Deitch show, running through Jan. 17, is an artist contextualizing the people he loves within art history, while preserving their legacies for the record. In Finley’s mind, this work is the connective tissue between so many different types of lineages, both artistic and familial. In this way, a moment between friends can reverberate through time, space and viewer. “To be able to use this show as a reference of a very dear memory of time spent with my friends and my community and to be able to build that moment with them so that we can all be seen, that’s everything,” he says. “That’s the truest thing I could say about it.”

Finley remembers curator Helen Molesworth coming by the studio awhile back when he was working on a different series of work. “She said this thing I never really forgot — it really transformed the way I see my work,” Finley says, quoting Molesworth: “‘Your art, your paintings aren’t just artworks. These are documentaries. Twenty years from now, people are going to ask you what life was like in that time. Your paintings are gonna be the artifacts, the evidence.’”

In his studio on that Tuesday afternoon, Finley was sitting among his people. For the last two years, through painting their portraits, he’s been able to hang out with his loved ones every day. The thought of soon unleashing the pieces into the world and never having them back here in exactly the same way is bittersweet. They’ve all lived together so long in the safety of this space. “These are my friends and people that I admire and look up to,” he says. “I’ve spent time making these things with them. But I’ve also acknowledged a very, very long time ago that these were never really mine. These belong to the world.”

Kohshin wears a vintage tie, custom vvershirt by Comme des Garçons Homme Plus and Comme des Garçons Homme Plus shorts.